I got some 1/2 watt resistors from a shop called jaycars here in New Zealand and then I wanted to get a lot more and since I'm a cheep student I didn't want to spent a whole lot of money at jaycars I jumped on eBay to get more 1/2 watts for cheaper as I'm sure plenty of people do but when I received them today I found that they were 2x bigger then the ones from jaycar so I checked the packaging on both the jaycar resistors and the eBay ones and tho only difference that I could find was that the jaycar ones were labelled 0.5w and the eBay ones were 1/2w... Correct me if I'm wrong but 0.5 and 1/2 is the same thing right? So why are the eBay resistors bigger? I'll post an image of them side by side too show you what I mean.

What is your goal? Do you need really tiny resistors? Are you just checking to see if these will work?
ps, please include in your pictures something to indicate actual size, like the end of a ruler or a tape measure. Your coins probably won't help unless you write what size they are in millimeters or inches.

One of the problems is the manufacturers. Some make resistors smaller than you would expect because the RESISTOR will survive the heat, but the circuit board turns brown under it. Some of them are so awful that they un-solder themselves after a few years!

What is your goal? Do you need really tiny resistors? Are you just checking to see if these will work?
ps, please include in your pictures something to indicate actual size, like the end of a ruler or a tape measure. Your coins probably won't help unless you write what size they are in millimeters or inches.

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Hey I'm about as new to this as you can get so I'm sort of building a little tool kit of commonly needed parts. My main goal is to be able to build guitar effect peddles of different sizes and other electronic things that might come in handy down that road.
I'm not home at the moment so I can't get anything to show size but if I can remember off the top of my head they are a about 2mm wide and maybe 9mm long giver or take 1/2 a mm

I have a couple of boxes of 1/4W resistors I picked up in some stock being liquidated by a company and thought it odd that they were the size of 1/8W resistors. Apparently this will be a new area for confusion...

I'm home and I've taken a photo of the 1/4 watt, "Supposed" 1/2 watt and the bigger 1/2 watt and I've taken a photo next to a ruler and it seems that the 1/4 and the small 1/4 are the same size but I did find the pack that the small 1/2 watt were in and it said it was "mini" could that be the reason it's so small?

Manufacturer's generally don't much give a care for standards and consistency, unless customers vote with their wallets and buy from competitors that do. In this case, sadly, you are on your own. That is why a company will pay a component engineer to develop and enforce incoming inspection standards. Hobbyists are constantly surprised that what they often get fails to conform to their expectations. It goes with the territory. Deal with it!